I was just wondering how much of the lyrics on Hybrid Theory were written by Mark Wakefield? I noticed Paul Rosenberg dumbed down a few of the songs like Crawling, In The End, A Place For My Head but I really liked the lyrics on Runaway and Points Of Authority and noticed the other day that Mark Wakefield is credited for lyrics. Does anyone know how much he really influenced? Just curious.
Mark Wakefield is credited as a co-writer on Runaway, Forgotten, and A Place For My Head because those songs originated from the period when he was still in the band (which is the same reason Phoenix is credited as a co-writer on those 3 tracks despite not playing on the album). All you really have to do to figure out how much input he had is compare the lyrics of the corresponding Xero demos: Stick and Move (entirely different song from Runaway, the only reason the songwriting credits were carried over is because of the reused main guitar riff), Rhinestone (some vague similarities in rhyme scheme between Mark's version and the final HT album version of Forgotten, but still pretty different - the biggest similarities are in the rap verses, which Mike would've written anyway), and Esaul (we don't have an actual Xero recording of that song, but the LPU11 demo was from the first recording session the band did with Chester, so the lyrics probably hadn't changed yet, and the only similarities to APFMH are the last two lines of the chorus).